As is well known to people who race bicycles in competition, there is significant usefulness in improving the adherence of a bicyclist's foot to the surface of a bicycle pedal. Various techniques and apparatus are well known in the art to accomplish this, and the inventive activity in this field goes back a long time. In 1897, Henry Tudor of Boston, Mass. was granted U.S. Pat. No. 588,038 for a device which sought to maintain contact between sole and pedal using magnetism.
Straps have frequently been employed, but such devices have always been a compromise between maintaining contact or adherence between sole and pedal, and quick release of the same for stability when the biker stops or balance is lost. Safety is sacrificed if quick release without manual manipulation of the device is minimized or eliminated. Sometimes metal semirigid retaining members are employed with or without flexible straps. Examples of such art include Foster, U.S. Pat. No. 4,172,392 and Mohr, U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,005. An interesting reference is Harwood, U.S. Pat. No. Des. D191,091 showing a wide band of material permanently connected to the pedal which appears to use VELCRO as the attaching means, in a different way than the present invention, but it appears also to require manual manipulation for release, thus compromising safety. One of the above references, Mohr, also specifically recites the use of VELCRO, but both the invention and use of VELCRO is significantly different than the present invention.
The keys to the present invention lie in the inventor's discovery of two correlating facts: (a) there is a greater need for adhering forces to resist slipping than there is to develop vertical pressure between bicycle pedals and biker soles; and (b) the force to separate mating portions of VELCRO is much greater in shear than in tension. Thus by mating a first portion of VELCRO on the surface of pedal and a second portion of VELCRO on a sole, three results are obtained (1) Slipping forces which, in this geometry are shear forces, are greatly resisted, creating strong adherence in the direction most needed. (2) Mild adherence between sole and pedal is provided because in this geometry such forces are the tension. (3) Quick release without manual manipulation for safety is achieved, since removal of the sole from the pedal is a tensile force with this geometry.
Since VELCRO is essentially a self-adhering material with quick release, and is suitable for a great number of adhering and separation cycles without losing its adhesion qualities, it is ideally suited for the adherence property sought.
Of course, the need for improving adherence between biker's sole and bicycle pedal is not limited to bicycle competion. The need for same exists to some degree with all bicyclists. Many casual or recreational bikers will have interest in the aid provided by the present invention, but nearly every biker engaging in the sport primarily for exercise and the long distance rider is likely to favor the invention most of the time.
A major feature of the present invention is the ability to almost instantaneously apply or remove the first mating portion of VELCRO to the pedal and second mating portion of VELCRO to the sole without tools, special bicycle parts, changing shoes, or the like. The present invention will fit any shape, size or style of shoe, instantly adapting to different people, and one size will fit and is readily attached to any conventional bicycle pedal. Attaching means of the first and second mating portions respectively to pedal and sole are optional, but are preferably also VELCRO, which has sufficient adhering force to attach and hold the component parts to the sole and pedal, and which adds to the speed and convenience with which the use of invention may be initiated or terminated.